Erratic1

No, nothing than the various powers sharing a lot of the same slotting options meaning if you take either of the last two builds and do nothing more than swap DP to Dark most of the Defense values stay significantly intact. But if you were looking at both Dark/ and /Ninja you already knew this. 😀

Did you see the other DP/Ninja thread: DP/Ninja - Blaster - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com) ?

Certainly better than what I offered could be done given the restrictions I placed on myself. 🙂 Still, for the effort/cost of the IOs, I might have expected a bigger overall difference: Though I gotta say the extra Regen, To-Hit, and Recharge are all very nice and quite possibly well worth the added effort/cost.

Ah, okay. I do not regularly do Frostfire but joined a +4x8 one last night on Torchbearer that went very smoothly.

Don't suppose this was on Torchbearer last night?

My first character, back in Beta was a Defender. With Live, because a friend was wanting to play a Defender and we were trying to cover all bases, my first was technically a Controller but I soon grew tired of him, put him aside, and made my beloved Rad/ Elec, who was the first character I took to 40 back when that was cap, then 50 when the cap was raised. Then came the next Defender, then the next, then the one after that. But somehow, since Homecoming has opened to the public, I have only (re)made one Defender, a Kin/Sonic, who languishes in his 40s. A few months back I decided I wanted to build a roster of characters which were so enjoyable to play they would each be, "The <Archetype>" for me--the character you are referring to when you say, "The Defender", or, "The Scrapper", or whatever archetype name even though you might have more than one of a given archetype. I already had The Brute and The Corruptor. I now have The Tanker. The Scrapper and The Widow are in their 30s and 40s respectively. This past Saturday I got the itch for a new Defender. My original Defender really was The Defender for me. I made others and enjoyed them but she was my go to girl for both soloing and team play. When I returned to CoH and until shutdown, Kin/Sonic filled that role. But for the new The Defender I wanted something new. So giving Elec/Psy a whirl. Through her mid-20s she has been fun but I have gotten to 40 on characters before deciding they were not quite right. So here's hoping.

My first 40 (back when that was the cap) then first 50, Live, back after release was Rad/Elec. Fond memories and yeah, getting people not to kill the anchor was a chore. But loved her.

On my Brute, after I stopped laughing, it came down to having to kill the things.

Came to hate Devastating Blow after my first go at Rad Melee and on my current go at it I have dropped it in favor of Cross Punch. Yeah, its AoE but it also has half the recharge of Devastating Blow (besides animating faster).

You could just use LFG and state how you are playing. "Running door missions. Seeking players interested in the old feel pre-IOs. LF5M, all levels welcome."

There are different levels of "optimal" and I am sure most people, even those on the forum, are playing sub-optimally (depending on what one qualifies that as) compared to someone. Some people IO their characters out from low level whereas I have only ever had characters making use of IOs before level 50 on my last two characters--a Tanker who started in the 40-50 range and a Scrapper who was about 35 when I purchased a package of IOs for him. Team mission running at anything short of Peregrine Island levels is however less common, most people seeming to prefer to run task forces. But I still see people recruiting for such (which I join from time to time). And a lot of people do actually enjoy soloing, so you're not going to see any sign of them when they are doing so. For example. I run the Twisted Reflection/Through the Looking Glass arc on all my characters, generally solo only asking for help on the final mission if necessary. I did the arc on a new blaster two days ago and she was able to handle the final arch-villain solo by making use of superspeed to stay away from him...so I didn't call for help on her.

Wondering if it has something to do with her being the SG leader since I otherwise do nothing with her, not even copying her to test.

If people are bothered by your post they can not read them or put you on ignore. If the forum administrators are not saying you are doing something wrong I would not let other's issues constrain you, especially as they have a solution.

Thx. Was really bothering me. Helps to know it is not just me.

I have noticed the order changes if I've logged into the Test Server.

When Homecoming opened to the public my first character made the first character I made and played to 50 also became the leader of the SG most of my characters are in. As much as I like her, I do not play her often and rarely log her in. Weekend before last I noticed the display said she had 0 Days offline. Knowing I had not played her in the previous day, I logged in, worried my account had been hacked. But nothing was missing or seemed amiss. So I kept an eye on her Days Offline status for a few days and the count seemed to be going back up. Today I noticed it said she had last been online 4 days ago. She is on the second tab of characters I have. Characters I actively play are all on the first tab and I KNOW I have not touched her in the past week...in fact, since that previous time I logged in. But she is the only character I am noticing this weirdness on. Anyone seeing anything strange like this on any of their characters?

Do you not have this reversed? Beta Decay grants 10+2.5n Recharge based on n opponents being nearby. Entropic Aura under Energy Aura grants 5+3.5n Energy Aura has the higher growth rate, 3.5n vs 2.5n, so in the end it must have the high value. To find where this is we can solve 10 + 2.5n <= 5 +3.5n: 10 + 2.5n <= 5 +3.5n 5 <= n At 4 opponents Beta Decay gives 20% Recharge, Entropic Aura gives 19% At 5 opponents Beta Decay gives 22.5% Recharge, Entropic Aura gives 22.5%

Trying to keep your power choices and slotting as intact as possible, you might do something slightly different: I did not fill in the procs in Cross Punch but that was laziness on my part. Did drop the Force Feedback since if a power does not recharge during its duration it loses the recharge benefit totally. Managed to make Melee Defense your high positional defense (53.94%), which will presumably serve you better in crowds of higher level enemies. Moonbeam recharges 1.7s faster and hits for 35% more damage 🙂 Smash/Lethal resistances are 15% higher and Energy/Negative resistance are minorly improved in exchange for minor degradations of Fire/Cold and Toxic resistances Not necessarily something I would have built but then you shouldn't be listening to me anyway. 🤪

More of a proof of concept (and following limitations I put on myself regarding not using purples, superior, or Winter IOs) but does manage to hit S/L/E and barely miss Ranged Defense cap (see edit). So you could obviously increase global recharge and possibly pick up some additional slots to spend with alternative slotting. Adrenal Booster's long recharge means Gaussian should proc every time you use it but that will only be every 3.5 minutes roughly. And the build keeps the single target melee attacks. Of course there are tradeoffs. For example S/L resistances.... Edit: Noticed had Hail of Bullet's defense boost turned on. Fixed that and adjusted slotting to bring Ranged defense back up to 1.42% short of cap.

I realize you were not trying to be exhaustive but probably also worth noting that defensively Electrical comes with unshakeable Endurance and Recovery debuff resistance and solid recharge debuff resistance compared to Fire's solid Endurance debuff resistance and anemic Recharge and Run debuff resistances. And while Fire most assuredly gives better offense, it is easy to overlook that Electrical gives better +Recharge and endurance recovery by which to use those faster attacks.

I have never done matching sets either. Resist the siren's call of matched sets. DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR PURITY!

Just finished hammering out a (probably stupid) build for a Bio/DM Tanker that I am about to hit the Test Server to try out.

Or do what I do which is run in Efficient mode and literally never have to stop swinging...ever...for any reason. It ups regen, recovery, and endurance cost reduction. Not as much of a defensive boost as Defensive and the boost to output is not as immediate as Offensive but a little bit of both.

As the player of an SS/Bio brute, I am curious what would make Bio better for scrappers and tankers.

Bio best practices says if you're in a crowd pop Parasitic Aura so bad things DO NOT happen to you. However I often ignore best practices.